A STUDENTS’ VIEW ON THE LEARNING PROCESS IN ASYNCHRONOUS
E-DISCUSSIONS – A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS
Eva R Fåhraeus, Stockholm University/KTH
Introduction
Group discussions through electronic means as a learning environment have
drawn a great interest within the education arena. Although this kind of
learning situation normally is based on a student-centred perspective on
teaching and learning, most research focuses more on the teacher’s perspective
than on the learners’. An exception is an ethnographic study of participants’
experiences, conducted by Noriko Hara on an education-technology course.
The aim of the study was "to increase understanding of the process and
students’ actual experiences in an Internet-enabled course." (Hara &
Kling, 2000, p.2) Among the conclusions, Hara and Kling point out that
"...we need more student-centered studies of distance education that are
designed to teach us how the appropriate use of technology and pedagogy
could make distance education more beneficial for more students."(ibid,
p. 19)
In the present study, all the students’ reports on learning and group
processes within a course on "People, Computers, and Society" within the
Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University have
been collected and analysed. The aim is to give a better understanding
of problems and possibilities experienced by the students using e-discussions
in learning. This could help us to design better learning settings.
The studied course
The aim of the course "People, Computers, and Society" is to develop the
students' ability to analyse the social aspects of computerisation. The
course also aims at creating an understanding of how technology interacts
with people and with society and at giving the students a better ability
to use electronic conferencing systems.
This course is given in a format that diverges totally from all the
rest of our courses. Only once do the students and the teacher meet face-to-face
for an introduction. After that, all communication takes place within an
electronic conferencing system. The students are to read articles within
four themes, discuss them and write a summary in small groups. The summaries
are then discussed electronically in the whole class. The students were
informed that they would be graded mainly as to their contributions to
the discussions. They should also deliver an essay to report on what they
have learnt.
In the autumn of 2000, the course was running for ten weeks, 30% of
full time, with about 50 students taking part. The course started with
a three-hour face-to-face lecture. During this meeting, the teacher explained
the course outline, introduced the discussion themes, and described the
conferencing system KOM2000 (Palme, 1998) to be used. The students were
divided into ten groups with about five students in each.
This time, the groups were given an extra task: to write a report on
their learning and group processes. The resulting ten reports are the basis
of this paper.
Research method
A grounded-theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was used when analysing
the group reports. The first step was open coding, trying to identify important
concepts and dimensions. This procedure stimulates the discovery of categories
and their properties. Important categories that were found were, e.g.,
organisation, group work, and learning. The next step, the axial coding,
built on these categories. More knowledge could be created by formulating
questions, e.g., "What did they learn?" or "Why did they meet face to face?"
and searching for the answers in the texts. The third step is to find the
core category and to systematically relate this to the other categories.
The core category was found to be "learning".
Findings
The groups reported on learning in many different areas: How to collaborate
at a distance, how to communicate via an electronic system, and how to
learn from discussions. Most of the groups are mainly positive and say
that they learnt a lot from the discussions, but three or four groups are
mainly negative to the learning outcomes. None of them is solely positive
or negative. Below, excerpts are given in italics (the present author's
translation from Swedish).
As a group and as individuals we have received a deeper understanding
of social and community consequences from the fast ICT development. I don’t
think I have learnt much that is new to me. But it has been interesting
and fun.
Most of the groups have critical comments on the syllabus and successive
instructions about course tasks, assessment rules, and the time schedule.
On the other hand, most students valued the freedom given by the course
format.
I’m not quite satisfied with the communication between teacher
and students. I feel that too much has been changed [during the course].
The information was often, but not always, too sparse.
---
Much was unclear in the beginning. The best thing was perhaps that
we got a rather great freedom concerning how we wanted to use our time
and arrange our learning process.
Learning how to organise group work
Most of the groups tried to meet face to face, at least once in the beginning,
in order to organise their work. Four groups, however, decided not to meet
but manage all group work at a distance.
The first two weeks the collaboration and communication did not
work quite well. It took some time before everybody had posted a message
and thus shown that they were members of the group. One member left the
course without telling the others. After that, we decided to meet physically
to plan how to organise the work during the coming weeks. When this was
done, I found that the collaboration within the group worked quite well.
One of the groups met twice for each theme, first to choose articles, then
to discuss the summaries. One of the groups decided not to meet at all.
Many groups noted that the first group meeting was important, and that
it helped them find effective ways to co-operate. In the group that did
not meet, most participants knew each other before this course. This was
the only group that reported previous experience of working at a distance.
All groups divided the work between them in one way or the other. Some
of the groups started out ambitiously, for instance with three people collaborating
around the summaries. They soon found this too ineffective and went on
in pairs or individually. In some cases, individual initiatives were taken
to organise the work and this was accepted and even appreciated by group
members. They commented that the first phase was more democratic and emotionally
engaging. But later on, the work grew more efficient and flexible, and
less stressful.
We noted that during the course, the group changed its behaviour.
We started with a more democratic spirit where everybody should take part
in the decisions. This was time-consuming and demanded that everybody was
more involved with the group. Then, some members took the initiative to
take responsibility for some work and most of the members accepted this
because it was more flexible and efficient.[...] During the "democratic
phase" of the group work, the members seemed to have a greater emotional
involvement to react to summaries from other group members and commented
more than during the later, more "goal-oriented phase".
None of the groups chose a group leader or co-ordinator, either consciously
or just by chance. This seemed to work well in most groups but at the end,
at least one of the groups was hesitant:
Maybe it would have been good to have a group leader who coordinated
everything. This person should have the overarching responsibility that
work was done on time and to see to it that everybody really invested the
time agreed upon, so that the work was evenly distributed. None of us had
previous experience; next time it will work out in a better way.
Learning from discussions
To discuss the themes with other participants is said to be stimulating
and to give new perspectives.
In many ways this was a good way of learning, as it gave us the
possibility to discuss one’s own recently acquired knowledge with other
group members.
Especially valuable was the possibility to learn from those who have more
experience, from job or family life.
It has been enriching that so many participants seem to take this
course while they are working. This ties the discussions to reality and
gives an insight into how it is to be working. We have been impressed by
the great knowledge mirrored in some contributions.
There were some complaints, e.g.: That the summaries are of an uneven quality:
often difficult to understand and not deep enough. Contributions in the
discussions were often said to be full of balderdash and empty of references
to the literature. It was not considered good that participating in the
discussion was mandatory. This would make for less involvement in the contributions.
Some contributions just repeated what other people had already said, some
were far too long. Focus is more on quantity than on quality.
The discussion was more of "tell what you think". Had there been
a greater demand to have support for propositions, then we might have learnt
more through research and literature.
One group found that if everybody did their preparations and took their
part of the work, the collaboration could be very rewarding.
When everybody in the group was well prepared concerning the theories,
the discussions were often very interesting and rewarding. This was when
you got the real understanding and feeling for the material, that is through
sharing each others ideas, thoughts and interpretations of the material.
Sharing the same interest and the same values about the group work seemed
to be important.
Our opinion is also that we in the group have been willing to listen
to each other and have not only stuck to our own view. Everybody could
give suggestions and nobody was silenced. We have shared our knowledge
and experiences, helped each other, explained and, above all, we have trusted,
supported and pep talked to each other, which we consider enormously important
for the learning process.
Learning how to collaborate and communicate asynchronously
The course has offered the participants the opportunity to explore the
forum system and how to communicate through it. This was valued by the
groups.
Our opinion is that the learning during the course has taken place
on two different levels. One is the knowledge level, which is based on
the articles that raised thoughts. The other is a more personal level:
how to develop communication and interaction between oneself and other
participants.
The first problem was to find out how the system worked and how to navigate
in it. To write summaries and arguments was not easy; it had to be learnt
and practised. The groups found that in order to get feedback on their
contributions, it was better to write short and meaningful messages. What
they missed most was the natural involvement and the joy in working, which
often appear in physical meetings.
To work in a course at a distance gives many unusual experiences,
both positive and negative. What you feel most unusual is not having physical
contact with peers, only some kind of virtual cohesiveness. You have no
idea about who the others are or what they look like, which in a way could
be rather exciting but at the same time rather frustrating as you are used
to doing group work "face2face".
To work in groups asynchronously is very demanding but can
also be effective and positive to certain groups.
To do group work at a distance is demanding for the members. [...]
On the other hand, group work at a distance is effective in solving the
task because the communication is more direct. This means that the time
is not spent on lots of unnecessary ‘chitchat’.
---
[...] there are at least as many individuals for whom
this way of communication is solely positive: Those who need some more
time for the discussion or who want to reflect before expressing their
opinion. For people with some handicap the computer-supported communication
can be important...
It can be confusing and tiresome when a discussion spreads out in time
because group members do not take part in the discussions every day. On
the other hand, the discussions may be more focused on the task.
One of the things we learnt was: in order to work effectively in
the group, the distance makes it necessary that group members are reasonably
equally active in the system. This is practically impossible, as we noticed
during the course. In the cases when you are dependent on quick answers
from a group member and you don’t get it, it can be very complicated to
conduct a discussion. This normally would be very simple to do. This indicates
that a question, which normally can be handled in five minutes face-to-face,
might take several hours, or even days to handle. What we learn from this
is to be conscious about these problems and therefore create group structures
and work forms contributing to solve these problems.
---
In our group, we agree that discussions in real time, where you immediately
can ask and get an answer, are preferable. We find that the interaction
then is felt more "completed" as the subject can be discussed to a point
on one occasion and it is not as easy to loose the thread or the interest.
Discussion and conclusions
In the study reported by Hara and Kling (2000) the students had lots of
trouble with the technology. They also reported about having problems with
unclear course instructions and with an overwhelming amount of contributions
to read. The students in that study also complained about too little and
too late feedback from the tutor and the inflexibility of the course schedule.
In our study, the students did not have much trouble with the technology,
naturally enough, being computer and systems scientists. We found, however,
problems with unclear course instructions, too much to read, and about
too sparse feedback from the tutor.
Did the students experience group cohesion? Woodruff (1999, p. 1) suggests
that learning communities "are held together by four cohesion factors:
namely, function, identity, discursive participation, and shared values."
The function is in our study the learning activities. To some of the students,
however, the aim to get their course points might be more important than
the actual learning outcome. The students also had different priorities
when it comes to time to spend on the course. The identity is mainly constructed
through the process of co-operation and communication in the group. As
the groups had many mandatory tasks to fulfil in order to get their course
points, there were many opportunities to construct a group identity. The
discursive participation is what forms the community. Students took part
in discussions, both in the small groups and in the whole class. Some of
the groups witness that the discussions in the small group were important,
inspiring and helping them to construct knowledge together. Shared values
are created and maintained by the active participation in discussions and
group work. It includes the rules for communication and the principles
for how to divide the work responsibilities that the group negotiates.
Values like "democratic work organisation", "sharing knowledge", "helping
each other", "trust", and "support" are considered by the groups to be
important.
The task of the student groups - to report on their learning and group
processes - has turned out to be an interesting event at three levels:
(1) The students got to reflect upon their processes and may have learnt
a little more from that. (2) Teachers can get an insight in the students’
experiences and opinions about the online group work and e-discussions
as learning situations. This can help us to improve our course outlines
and behaviours as teachers and tutors. (3) Researchers can dig deeper in
this rich material to try to find theoretical explanations and relations
between influencing factors.
One important but not at all novel conclusion from this study is that
instructions have to be very clear in order not to take too much energy
from the learning tasks. This may be even more important in e-discussions
than in traditional settings. Another conclusion is that it is possible
but difficult for groups to agree upon how to organise their work totally
without meeting face to face. The building of a cohesive learning community
asks for opportunities to construct a group identity and to develop shared
values.
References
Hara, N. & Kling, R. (2000). Students’ Distress
with a Web-based Distance Education Course: An Ethnographic Study of Participants’
Experiences. CSI Working Paper, WP 00-01-B1. (Accepted for publication
in Information, Communication & Society.)
Palme, J. (2000) KOM2000. Advanced Forum &Chat Software.
URL: http://cmc.dsv.su.se/KOM2000/
Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative
Research: Grounded Theory, Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park:
SAGE Publications.
Woodruff, E. (1999). Concerning the Cohesive Nature
of CSCL Communities. Proceedings of The CSCL Conference 1999.
Author
Eva R Fåhraeus
Stockholm University / KTH
Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences
Electrum 230
S-164 40 Kista
evafaahr@dsv.su.se